The Big Picture Magazine
When the sun is high, it casts the most unyielding shadows. And in Jodorowsky’s unflinchingly off-kilter masterpiece The Holy Mountain (1973), the sun is always out, illuminating the improbable tangents of the human condition and stirring the dark impulses that lurk in our culture’s crevices. As a piece of high-camp, low-inhibition social commentary, The Holy […]
“We all have a past, but it doesn’t define us” one character says in Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father the Devil (2021). The film holds this assertion under close scrutiny. The story focuses on Marie, played by Babetida Sadjo, a Guinean immigrant living and working in rural France at a sleepy retirement home. She maintains a […]
I recently returned from a short holiday to Spain, where – apart from reminding myself that the sun did in fact exist – I was introduced to the amazing murals of Estapona; a small resort town two hours west of Malaga on the south coast. The huge arts initiative, which invited painters from all over […]
It was purely by accident that I was recommended a film the other day which featured the actress Sally Kellerman who sadly passed away on the 24th February at the age of 84. The film was Adrian Lyne’s Foxes (1980), starring Jodie Foster as 15 year old tearaway Jeanie juggling the unfair demands of adulthood […]
“You can understand why someone would rob a house if they’re broke, but to rob…children of their lives [is] far more insidious…” Wes Craven states in his director’s commentary for the R-rated 1991 film, The People Under the Stairs. Loosely based on a true occurrence, Craven’s “horror noire” examines the irony of its Mother (Wendy […]
Comedian and director Carl Reiner’s second directorial feature-length film, The Comic (1969), starred Dick Van Dyke as a fictitious silent film era comedian, Billy Bright. Bright, an over bearing, egocentric comic, never reached the level of fame he believed he should have, always falling victim to the behavior of others like his wife (and co-star) […]
Ridley Scott’s fascination with omniscience goes to the outer limits in his 2012 science fiction film, Prometheus (2012). Often assumed a prequel to Alien (1979), Prometheus focuses on discovering mankind’s “engineers,” while amalgamating concepts of heroes and villains. Scott’s unsurpassable directing techniques are shown through the tiniest features in his characters. Even the unsettling soundtrack brings […]
Weaving horror techniques with philosophical undertones, Cube (1997) navigates the dark recesses of humanity in a mechanical enigma. In a bright start for his career, Vincenzo Natali co-wrote and directed the movie while still a student in film school. It is perhaps due to this creative freedom – and a low budget – that a […]
In his autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography, Akira Kurosawa mentions that since his youth he had loved horses and had spent whole afternoons at the hippodrome in Meguro. One of his screenplays written in the early 1940s was called Jajauma monogatari (The Story of a Bad Horse). This project was never realized, but Uma no […]